Monday, October 16, 2006

disappointed

that is how I would sum up my weekend. I was psyched to push myself. My first time on a four person team meant that I was going to do four laps and hopefully five if things went well. Our team was also prepped to be competitive. We went into it thinking had a chance at first but were sure we could place in the top three. Our hopes were high and I was brimming with anticipation.
Saturday we awoke to dark low clouds, a stark contrast of the day before. The optimist in me felt that it rain now and then it would be over. I had checke the forcast and that seemed somewhat accurate. It lightly rained on and off all morning and seem to break a bit for the noon start.
Adam posted a 1:25 first lap which is respectable given the Le Mans start. Chris and Tim tore it up with a 1:12 and 1:11 respectively. I then went out and soon over came my normal pre race nervousness. I felt pretty good. I had some small glitches, but that is racing. I was watching my time hoping to post close to 1:15. No dice, I came in at 1:22, but I felt great. I was a bit wet and muddy. My legs still felt pretty fresh and I was excited to see how the rest of the race would go. The answer is down.
Not long after I got back to camp it started raining. It was not super hard but it was a steady flow which was a bad mix for th already saturated ground. The water just flowed where ever it could. Luckily we had camped on a bit of a hill and did not have as much pooling water as some others did.
Adam's time was slower, but really good for the conditions. I have seen it posted as a 1:38 and 1:34 (which will be explained later). Chris then went out around 6:40/6:45 pm. Adam says the course is a mess. The detours around puddles are as bad as the puddles themselves. He still hooked up pretty good, but water was flowing everywhere. As 8 pm approached, I started getting nervous for Chris. Reports were not good from those coming off laps.
Then we hear the course is closed until 7 am with a 6 am captains meeting. Chris also rode an impressive 1:34.Tim came back with him and this is where things get fuzzy. We think we are in first, but then there are rumors of the last lap not counting. What? Chris's lap put us from 12 minutes behind first to eight minutes in first. So what place are we in? About this time it stopped raining.
Then there was the start time confusion. We were going to go out based on place, but teams that were significantly behind us were scheduled to leave before us. We went down three times to confirm our start time 10:46. Then, luckily, we hear that our team (Tim) was going to go out at 10:20. Tim had started getting ready prior to this announcement and was able to get down there within the 15 minute lead time they gave us. He rode a sub 1:10.
Strategically, we decided that Chris would go out again, but he would need to steal the brake pads off my bike. (I now can not even go out on the course and ride just for the fun of it.) He finished with a slower than expected 1:14. Which if we were in first this morning would allow us to maintain our lead. If not, well who knows.
So yeah, I did one lap. One lap? I am (kind of) okay with it because it may have been best for the team. I don't know yet. Because after waiting around for two plus hours for the awards, there were no awards. But apparently our category got together and decided how we would figure laps. That discussion did not incorporate any of my team though.
After 24 hours or racing riding only one lap, I have no idea what are team standing is. So yeah, I had a disappointing race.

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